


We're here to stay

by elliebell (Naladot)



Category: Day6 (Band), GOT7
Genre: Caretaking, Conversations, Ensemble Cast, Fist Fights, Friendship, Gen, Hiding, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Introspection, JYP Nation, Major Character Injury, Personal Growth, industry meta
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 04:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16758154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/elliebell
Summary: After getting into a fist fight at a club, Jaebum just wants to hide away until his face heals up, so he calls the only friend who will get where he's coming from—Sungjin. Sungjin agrees to hide Jaebum in his apartment as best he can, and as the whole story comes to light, the two of them begin sorting out what it means to be an idol and a leader amidst the whirlwind of fame.





	We're here to stay

**Author's Note:**

> Why does JB love Sungjin so much? Honestly.
> 
> Special thank you to Sapphy/iverins for asking for JB/Sungjin fic, please accept this friendship fic~
> 
> Probably 3 chapters. Title/Chapter titles from "King and Lionheart" by Of Monsters and Men.

* * *

The plastic seats in the emergency room curve at exactly the wrong angle to keep a man as tall as Jaebum sitting upright. Every few minutes, he realizes he’s slid halfway down, and pushes himself back up again, annoyed. His good eye darts between the television mounted to the wall, where a news program flickers silently on the outdated monitor, and his phone screen, which remains black.

He clicks it on again. Still no notifications. But that also means that no one knows he’s here. Which means no one has found out about the fight. Jaebum shifts the ice pack to a different spot on his forehead, allowing himself a brief moment of relief, and then realizes he’s halfway down in the chair again. He pushes himself back up.

The room is, by some miracle, mostly empty except for a few elderly patients and a mother with a toddler occupying the nurses’ attention. No one notices Jaebum, but he keeps the hood of his jacket up, anyway. Even if videos of the fight haven’t hit the internet yet, there’s no telling whether or not someone might snap a photo of him here. He checks his phone again. Nothing.

The doors into the emergency room slide open and Jaebum looks up. Standing on the other side is Sungjin— _ finally _ —with the aura of a hero running to save the day. Jaebum can practically hear the orchestra rise.

Sungjin rushes inside, pulling off his winter gloves and scanning the room. He spots Jaebum and visibly sighs with relief, then stalks over to him, his brow already furrowed with concern.

“What the hell?” Sungjin demands.

Jaebum offers him a small smile. “Is it bad?”

Sungjin searches Jaebum’s face for a moment, moving back and forth to get a good look. His small frown suggests that the prognosis is not good.

“It’s—” Sungjin’s nose scrunches up.

“That bad?”

“You look like shit.”

Sungjin sits down and gently wraps his hand around Jaebum’s wrist, guiding his arm down so that he can get a look at what’s under the ice pack. If he already thought it was bad—well, this is only going to go downhill. Jaebum licks his lips, running his tongue over the split in the corner which still carries the metallic taste of blood.

Sungjin’s expression is a weird mix of pity and disbelief. Jaebum can imagine what he’s seeing, though he’d hoped that what he saw in the mirror earlier was just a trick of the shitty fluorescent lights in the hospital bathroom. He has a black eye on the side that  _ wasn’t _ hidden by the ice pack, which would have been the first thing Sungjin saw. In addition, he’s got a split lip and a couple of scratches on his chin. On the ice pack side, he has two neat rows of stitches, one above and one below his left eye. This side was swollen, last he checked. Judging by Sungjin’s face, it hasn’t improved.

“I called you,” Jaebum says quickly, “Because—I mean obviously I can’t call my mom. And I don’t want my members to know about this—or the company—and I really don’t know what to do.” He stops talking, well aware of how lame he sounds. 

Sungjin’s eyebrows lift, wrinkling up his forehead, and he blinks. “I’m not sure how you’re going to hide this.”

Jaebum groans and lets himself slide down in his seat until his head is resting on the thin plastic back of the chair. The change in position sets his stitches to throbbing, but he just lets the pain overtake his face.

“Why is your hand bandaged?” Sungjin asks.

Jaebum waves his bandaged hand in the air. “Do you think ‘tripped on ice’ is a believable excuse?”

“If there was ice outside? Maybe.”

“Taecyeon-hyung got to tell the press that he messed up his arm because of arm wrestling.”

“Yeah, but—that was what happened. I’m guessing that isn’t what happened to you.”

“I got in a car accident.”

“Right.”

Sungjin’s hand grips Jaebum’s shoulder, and Jaebum opens his not-swollen eye to see Sungjin’s concerned face looming over him. He hasn’t seen concerned Sungjin in—who knows how long. Since trainee days.  _ Congratulations, Im Jaebum—you are officially a failure. _ Maybe if he closes his eyes, this will all go away.

“Come on,” Sungjin says, his grip growing tighter. “You can come home with me.”

  
  
  


Neither of them say anything after they get into the back seat of a cab. If the driver recognizes them, he gives no indication. Jaebum clicks on his phone again, but there’s nothing new except a message from Youngjae which reads  _ your cat keeps chewing this plastic bag is that normal? _ Jaebum quickly shoots back  _ can you hide the bag? _ and then puts his phone back into his pocket and lets out a deep exhale.

“Did they give you medicine?” Sungjin asks.

Jaebum shrugs. “They said to take ibuprofen and come back if anything seems unusual.”

“Hmm.” Sungjin looks skeptical, for some reason, and turns his head out the window again. Jaebum moves to rest his chin on his hand, but the pressure shoots pain all the way up to his stitched-up forehead and reopens the split in his lip.

Stupid. No wonder Sungjin won’t even look at him—he’s probably already guessed half the story. Sungjin has an uncanny way of being right about things, especially if it’s something Jaebum would otherwise not talk about. And Jaebum would otherwise not talk about why he went clubbing tonight.

They reach Sungjin’s dorm and Sungjin reaches forward to pay the tab, climbs out of the car, then automatically turns around to help Jaebum slide out the door. He’s careful enough, pulling up under Jaebum’s good arm, but his mouth is set in a hard line and—well, Sungjin’s one to nag, not to lecture, but if he  _ does _ lecture, Jaebum is pretty sure he deserves it.

The cab pulls out into the road, leaving them there in front of the apartment complex gate. Sungjin is just looking at him. Jaebum clicks on his phone again—nothing.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Sungjin asks.

Jaebum winces, his eyes roaming the empty street. No one is out, not even a grandpa for a nighttime walk. “It doesn’t matter,” he says.

“Right. It’s a secret.”

Jaebum groans and runs his uninjured hand back through his hair. He doesn’t even know where to start with admitting something that floods him with this much shame. “I messed up,” he says, stepping back and turning to face the street. “That’s it, okay?”

“It’s three in the morning,” Sungjin sighs. “You owe me better than that.”

Jaebum doesn’t say anything. He stares at a spot in the concrete of the sidewalk, silently willing all of this to disappear. Just when things are going good, he always does something that reminds him he’s never really going to be good enough for this job. He shouldn’t be a leader—he’s always about one misstep away from fucking up all his band members’ careers and his own, too.

“Come on, Jaebum,” Sungjin says, just enough edge to his voice to make Jaebum glance his way. That look in Sungjin’s eyes, somewhere between pity and disappointment, cuts right through Jaebum. He takes a deep breath.

“Look, okay—I went to a club with some friends, and there was this guy there who just kept taunting me. Like talking shit about me being an idol, my band, crude stuff about Twice—I mean, whatever you’re imagining, it was that bad. What would you do?”

Sungjin shrugs, his mouth still curved into a frown. Jaebum knows well enough what Sungjin would do, which is why he’s here talking to Sungjin in the first place, why Sungjin was the one person he could bring himself to call. Sungjin would never let anyone demean him like that. He probably would find another way to assert himself than with his fists, but if it came down to it, Sungjin wouldn’t put up with what that idiot at the club was saying.

“So I got in his face—” Jaebum closes his eyes, trying not to let his blood boil again. “I wasn’t going to hit him or anything, but I just—I couldn’t just take that.”

“I know,” Sungjin says quietly.

“And he just keeps going, calls me some stuff I’m not going to repeat—” Can’t bring himself to repeat. But Jaebum can hear it in his own head, the words that guy said with his sneering smile, and it makes him furious all over again, and far too embarrassed to ever say aloud. “So I grabbed his shirt and he says—”

Here Jaebum has to stop and take a deep breath. Sungjin just waits, his brow creased together.

“He says, ‘Go ahead. All I need is twenty seconds and your career is over.’ And I look over and his buddies have all got their phones out. So I let him go.”

Sungjin closes his eyes, his bottom lip pulling low in a grimace. “And then he beat you up.”

“And I couldn’t even defend myself,” Jaebum spits. He points to the cuts around his eye. “He broke a bottle on my face and I just  _ took it. _ ”

Sungjin shakes his head slowly as he shoves his fists into the pockets of his hoodie and looks around, his eyes darting here and there, until they come to rest on Jaebum again. “I don’t think you’re going to be able to hide this, if I’m being honest. But you can stay with me until the swelling in your face goes down, at least.”

“Please don’t tell anyone.” Jaebum tries not to let desperation seep into his voice, but it does, anyway. He can’t imagine facing his members like this, or listening to what they’d say. He can’t imagine the staff trying to apply makeup to his mangled face, or the overtime they’d have to work drafting up a cover for what happened. “I’ve got a week of vacation, that’s why I even went out tonight—so by next week, maybe it will be better.”

Sungjin blinks at him. For a second, he’s sure that for the first time in his whole life, Sungjin is about to reject him.

But instead, Sungjin just drapes an arm over Jaebum’s shoulder and pulls out his keys. “I don’t know how you think  _ my _ members aren’t going to figure out you’re here,” he says, “But I’ll try my best.”

  
  
  
  


Jaebum can’t stop mulling over the fight as he follows Sungjin up the dark stairs of his building. He wants to block out everything that guy said—the slurs, the calculated digs—but it’s like some sort of infection, already coursing through his blood. It’s not like Jaebum has any illusions about his career. He’s a pop star, not a soldier or something. He loves his work and he gets that there are going to be plenty of people in the world who think music primarily targeting the middle to high school demographic is inherently uncool.

Which somehow makes it that much worse, that he couldn’t defend himself. He should have punched back, consequences be damned. He could have taken that guy. Defended his honor. What kind of idiot prioritizes his reputation over his pride, anyway? Someone like Jaebum, apparently.

Sungjin stops in front of his front door, keys glinting in the low light streaming through the window, and looks back at Jaebum. “You okay?” he whispers.

Jaebum just shrugs. Sungjin hesitates, then turns the keys in the lock, and slowly opens the door. It squeaks a little, anyway, but the apartment is otherwise silent. Jaebum follows him in and slips off his shoes as quietly as possible. When he looks up, Sungjin shakes a finger at Jaebum’s shoes, and it dawns on Jaebum that his shoes are a pretty solid giveaway that he’s here. He picks them up and holds onto them as he follows Sungjin back through the living room, and into his bedroom.

Sungjin flips on the lights and gives Jaebum a smile. “Welcome, fugitive,” he says in a low voice, clearly amused at his own joke.

“Ha,” Jaebum says flatly. He’s exhausted, and his face hurts and his hand hurts as well as some assorted bruises hidden by his clothes, but he knows from years of experience that it’s better not to assume he can use Sungjin’s stuff. So he stands just inside the doorway, glaring around the neatly arranged room.

Sungjin gives him an odd look as he moves across the room and pulls open a drawer. “You can wear these,” he says, pulling out a sweatshirt and a pair of flannel pants. He pulls out a towel from another drawer, and an unused toothbrush.

“Why are you so prepared?” Jaebum asks, arching his good eyebrow.

“Why do you think?” Sungjin intones, giving Jaebum a very innappropriate smile.

Jaebum snorts. “Yeah, right.”

“You don’t know. I’m the frontman of a band. I play guitar. It goes over swimmingly with the ladies.”

“And you bring them back to your  _ dorm _ . Does Wonpil make them pancakes in the morning?”

“No, Dowoon makes them egg toast.” Sungjin grins.

Jaebum doesn’t doubt that Sungjin has thoroughly ignored the dating ban during his off-time, but he’s also known Sungjin for years, and a one-night stand in his dorm room isn’t really his style. Shaking his head, he moves to pick up the clothes and toiletries Sungjin laid out. “Will Dowoon make  _ me _ egg toast?” he asks.

“Depends on how much you flirt with him,” Sungjin returns. Grinning, he points to the door. “Bathroom is down the hall and to the left. Only Wonpil and I use that one, and I’m pretty sure Wonpil went to stay with Jinyoung, so you should be in the clear.”

“Thanks.”

Jaebum still makes sure to tiptoe his way down the hall, just in case. There’s a light on under the door at the far end of the hall, and faint video game noises floating through it. Jaebum turns the knob on the bathroom door very carefully. If anyone finds out he’s here, and sees his face, he’ll have twenty-four hours at best before someone tracks him down and the biggest disaster of his career begins. He’s fortunate that Day6’s manager chose to move into his own place.

Once he’s situated in the bathroom, he holds his breath, and flips on the light.

It’s a lot worse than he imagined. Much, much worse. The swelling has gotten even more noticeable since leaving the hospital, rendering his left eye nothing more than a small slit in a balloon of red skin. His other eye makes him look like a panda, if a panda were white and greenish-purple. There’s dried blood crusted around the slit in his lip, and the cuts on his chin look grisly, and will probably scar.

Jaebum resists the urge to punch something. It will, after all, only make things worse.

He’s not sure if Sungjin will be willing to hide him here for a whole week—but it doesn’t look like it’s going to matter. With this face, his best bet is to heal a bit and then come up with a convincing cover story. If he can at least buy a few days to do that—that’ll be enough. It’s got to be.

  
  
  
  


Sungjin is still up when Jaebum sneaks back to his room. He looks up at Jaebum enters, and immediately frowns. “Did you wash your face at all?” he asks.

Jaebum shrugs. “I was afraid I’d get the stitches wet. I just held the shower head with this hand and turned the water on really softly.” He mimes his pathetic shower. Sungjin just looks at him.

“Okay,” he says, in disbelief. He grabs his pajamas and sneaks down the hall, leaving Jaebum alone in his room.

It’s so obviously Sungjin’s room that Jaebum automatically laughs—and then regrets it as his lip splits open again. Wincing, he puts a finger to the cut and looks around. All Sungjin’s books and movies line his shelves, neatly arranged, and the blankets have been pulled at neat angles across the bed. Jaebum sits down on the bed, too tired to worry about receiving a scolding from Sungjin when he gets back. All Jaebum wants to do is  _ sleep _ , and maybe he can forget about what happened at the club.

Sungjin comes back, freshly showered. He holds up a washcloth and lifts his eyebrows. “The things I do for you,” he mutters, closing the door behind him.

“What—” Jaebum asks, but Sungjin has already crossed the room and held the washcloth up in front of Jaebum’s face. His hand hovers there while Sungjin just looks at him, as if waiting for permission.

“You think I want your crusty blood all over my stuff?” Sungjin asks.

Jaebum tries to roll his eyes, but doesn’t really succeed except in his mind. “Fine,” he mutters.

Sungjin sits next to him on the bed. Very gingerly, he wipes the cloth across Jaebum’s face. Jaebum had actually tried to do this, but Sungjin has the benefit of two uninjured hands and two uninjured eyes, and moves more efficiently. The hot cloth does in fact feel good, and Jaebum’s eyes flutter closed. He just wants to sleep—for  _ hours _ —

He snaps back awake. Sungjin is laughing at him.

“Fighting is pretty exhausting, huh?” Sungjin asks.

“Shut up.”

Sungjin turns and shoots the washcloth into a laundry basket on the other side of the room. “This bed is big enough for the both of us if you stay on your side,” he says. “No cuddling.”

“This is the worst one-night stand ever,” Jaebum says, giving Sungjin the best sly grin he can manage with his beat up face.

Sungjin laughs and pulls back the covers. “You and me are a long-term relationship, my friend.”

Jaebum should protest, but instead he stretches out his aching body and lets Sungjin tuck him in. On a normal day, there is no way they would ever do this for each other. Jaebum  _ might _ let Jackson do something like this, but it would be amusing. Not sincere.

As he drifts off to sleep, it occurs to Jaebum that this might be a sign that Sungjin is actually very, very worried.

  
  
  


He wakes up to a sunny, empty room and a series of text messages from Sungjin.

_ Hope your eyes still work _

_ We should all be out all day so you’re good _

_ Don’t eat in my room _

_ Actually you can eat in my room but clean up after yourself _

_ Don’t do anything weird in my room either _

_ If you watch porn in my room that is crossing a really big line _

_ Seriously don’t _

_ Actually don’t eat in my room either _

_ Ok hope youre ok _

Jaebum laughs to himself and turns over in bed. Right now, having just woken up, all his emotions seem distant and unreal, like he’s just floating here, unburdened. He tries to hold onto that feeling, that sense of peace. Come to think of it, he can’t remember the last time he felt that way.

He spends the day lurking around the dorm. He calls for takeout and leaves the money taped to the door, then retrieves the food once he’s sure the delivery guy is gone. He flips on the television and watches half of an Iron Man movie before drifting to sleep and waking up at the ending. He texts his mom and lies to her, claiming that he’s just enjoying a day out with his friends. Whenever he goes to the bathroom he avoids looking in the mirror, so his face doesn’t disturb him. He doesn’t take any pain killers even though his face is throbbing and his hand is itching, because he hates the stuff—it reminds him of when he injured the disc in his back, which reminds him of missing out on too many activities and disappointing so many people, which reminds him what kind of fallout last night’s fight is bound to have next week.

In this way, not thinking about things, Jaebum manages to have a fairly relaxing day. When the low afternoon sunlight is slanting through the windows, he conceals himself in Sungjin’s room, tucking himself into bed and watching the dance of shadows on the ceiling.

He wakes up again to Sungjin carefully closing the door. “I’m just going to take a nap!” Sungjin yells through the crack. Somewhere in the apartment, Brian yells back “Sweet dreams!”

The door clicks closed and Sungjin holds up a plastic bag. “I brought you a lot of food,” he says.

Jaebum reflexively goes to rub his eyes. And then lets out an involuntary cry of pain.

“You’re the worst fugitive I’ve ever hidden in my room,” Sungjin says, setting the bag of food down on his desk.

“Did anyone say anything?” Jaebum asks, still wincing in pain.

“I told them I brought home someone from the club.”

“And they believed you?”

“Actually, no one said anything. But I don’t know why you doubt me,” Sungjin says. “I’m a rockstar, you know.”

“I doubt you because you’re just not that guy.”

“How do you know?”

“Remember when you dated Nayeon for two weeks,” Jaebum says, taking the chopsticks Sungjin hands him, “And she dumped you for being too attentive?”

Sungjin falls into his desk chair, grinning. “I mean, we were really young.”

“Remember how she then dated Brian for two weeks and you two got in a ‘fight’?” Jaebum makes air quotes with his good hand—thankfully, also the one he uses for eating. There is no way in hell he would let Sungjin  _ feed _ him, especially not after washing his face yesterday.

“We should do a JYP Entertainment tell-all.” Sungjin laughs, his mouth full of noodles. “Just to see what happens. No one would believe us, and all hell would break loose.”

“First episode: Im Jaebum gets beat up at a club!”

He means it more as a joke than anything, but Sungjin’s expression turns serious. For a few moments they just keep eating, while Sungjin visibly tries to formulate what to say and Jaebum hopes he won’t say anything at all.

“It’s not the end of the world, you know,” Sungjin says. “You don’t have to tell the truth.”

Jaebum just shakes his head, setting the chopsticks down in his bowl. He suddenly doesn’t have much of an appetite. “It’s not the public reaction I’m worried about.”

He lets that settle between them for a minute as he mulls it over in his own head. He’s really not worried about the public reaction, because once the swelling goes down, it will be easy enough to spin this as an accident. The fans see him with rose-colored glasses—this isn’t even a criticism. It’s a sign that Jaebum is good at his job.

But his members, and the company—he can lie to them, but they’re going to sniff out the truth, even if they never nail down the particulars. Just thinking about it makes him want to throw up. He sets his food back on Sungjin’s desk and settles back onto the bed, picking apart the fabric of the bandage on his hand.

Sungjin sighs. “You know why I cut my hair?”

Jaebum looks up again. Sungjin runs a palm over his head, giving Jaebum a faint smile as he does so.

“To be a badass?” Jaebum asks. He might even wink, if he could, but he can’t.

Sungjin shakes his head. “Not exactly. I wanted to prove to myself that I  _ could _ , you know? That I didn’t give a fuck about what anyone thinks.”

“Sounds pretty badass to me.”

Sungjin sets his own bowl back on the desk and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and looking up at Jaebum. “I think you’re like me in this way… I always want to be the person people see me as. But a lot of the time, I’m not that guy. I’m just faking it.”

“Fake it till you make it?”

“I can live with that,” Sungjin says. “But you—Jaebum, you’ve always put this crazy amount of pressure on yourself. And beat yourself up if you couldn’t achieve that standard you set.”

Jaebum stares hard at a corner of the rug. He can’t bring himself to look up at Sungjin, not when dozens of memories are whirring across his mind. Sometimes he feels like he’s good enough for what he’s earned—his career, his friends, his good reputation—but Sungjin’s right. He’s faking it. Deep down, he knows that he hasn’t worked hard enough, and all it took was one jerk at a club to remind him that whether it’s his temper or his pride or his inadequacy, there’s always going to be some way he can fail. And he’ll bring down so many other people with him.

“Jaebum?”

Jaebum looks up and blinks at Sungjin.

“You’re okay,” Sungjin says. “And everyone else will tell you that, too. I promise.”

Jaebum pushes a hand through his hair and tries to ignore the stinging in his eyes. “You don’t know that,” he says. “Look at me.”

“I do know that,” Sungjin says. “And hopefully, by the time you stop hiding in my bedroom? You’ll know that, too.”

Jaebum just nods, because it's easier than arguing with Sungjin—who always wins. But the truth is, no matter what Sungjin says, Jaebum is always going to be a little less than good enough. The only question is how well he can hide it.

A few more days. If he can just make it a few more days, maybe things will turn out okay.

_ tbc _


End file.
